What Auto-Configured Health Indicators Does Spring Boot Actuator Provide?

Mar 28, 2026

Problem

When I deployed my Spring Boot application to Kubernetes, I wanted to check the health endpoint. I called /actuator/health and got this response:

{
  "status": "UP"
}

But I expected more details. I knew my app connected to a PostgreSQL database and Redis, but the health endpoint didn’t show their status. I was confused because I thought Spring Boot would automatically check those connections.

Environment

Spring Boot 3.2.0
Java 21
PostgreSQL 15
Redis 7.0
Maven 3.9.0

What happened?

I was setting up health monitoring for my microservices. I added the Actuator dependency to my project:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
</dependency>

I also had database and Redis dependencies:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-redis</artifactId>
</dependency>

When I checked /actuator/health, I only saw "status": "UP" without any component details. I thought Spring Boot would automatically show database and Redis health status.

How to solve it?

First, I tried to understand what health indicators were actually active. I enabled detailed health information:

management:
  endpoint:
    health:
      show-details: always

Then I called the health endpoint again:

curl http://localhost:8080/actuator/health

The response showed all active health indicators:

{
  "status": "UP",
  "components": {
    "db": {
      "status": "UP",
      "details": {
        "database": "PostgreSQL",
        "validationQuery": "isValid()"
      }
    },
    "diskSpace": {
      "status": "UP",
      "details": {
        "total": 500068036608,
        "free": 87636123648,
        "threshold": 10485760
      }
    },
    "ping": {
      "status": "UP"
    },
    "redis": {
      "status": "UP",
      "details": {
        "version": "7.0.0"
      }
    }
  }
}

The health indicators were already there. I just needed to enable the details visibility.

Understanding Auto-Configured Health Indicators

Spring Boot Actuator provides a comprehensive set of auto-configured health indicators. These indicators activate automatically based on your classpath dependencies.

Available Health Indicators

Indicator	Purpose	Activates When
DataSource	Database connectivity	JDBC DataSource bean present
DiskSpace	Available disk space	Always active
Redis	Redis connectivity	Redis client on classpath
MongoDB	MongoDB connectivity	MongoDB client on classpath
Elasticsearch	Elasticsearch cluster	Elasticsearch client present
Neo4j	Neo4j database	Neo4j client on classpath
Hazelcast	Hazelcast cluster	Hazelcast instance present
RabbitMQ	RabbitMQ broker	RabbitMQ client present
JMS	JMS broker	JMS client configured
LDAP	LDAP server	LDAP configured
SSL	Certificate validity	SSL enabled

Why Some Indicators Were Hidden

The reason I initially didn’t see details was security. By default, Spring Boot hides health details to prevent exposing sensitive infrastructure information:

management:
  endpoint:
    health:
      show-details: never  # default value

You have three options:

never - Never show details (default)
always - Always show details
when-authorized - Show details only to authenticated users

Controlling Health Indicators

Sometimes you want to disable certain indicators. For example, if you have MongoDB on your classpath but don’t use it:

management:
  health:
    mongo:
      enabled: false

You can also disable all auto-configured indicators and enable only specific ones:

management:
  health:
    defaults:
      enabled: false
    db:
      enabled: true
    diskspace:
      enabled: true

For the disk space indicator, you can configure the threshold:

management:
  health:
    diskspace:
      enabled: true
      threshold: 100MB  # minimum free space required

Checking Active Health Indicators Programmatically

If you want to see what health indicators are registered in your application, you can inject the HealthContributorRegistry:

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/api")
public class HealthController {

    private final HealthContributorRegistry healthRegistry;

    public HealthController(HealthContributorRegistry healthRegistry) {
        this.healthRegistry = healthRegistry;
    }

    @GetMapping("/health-indicators")
    public List<String> getHealthIndicatorNames() {
        List<String> names = new ArrayList<>();
        healthRegistry.stream()
            .forEach(contributor -> names.add(contributor.getName()));
        return names;
    }
}

When I called this endpoint, I got:

["db", "diskSpace", "ping", "redis"]

The Reason Behind Auto-Configuration

Spring Boot uses conditional bean registration to auto-configure health indicators. Each indicator has a corresponding auto-configuration class:

@ConditionalOnClass(RedisClient.class)
@ConditionalOnBean(RedisConnectionFactory.class)
@ConditionalOnEnabledHealthIndicator("redis")
public class RedisHealthContributorAutoConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public RedisHealthIndicator redisHealthIndicator(
            RedisConnectionFactory redisConnectionFactory) {
        return new RedisHealthIndicator(redisConnectionFactory);
    }
}

The key conditions are:

@ConditionalOnClass - The class must be on classpath
@ConditionalOnBean - The bean must exist in context
@ConditionalOnEnabledHealthIndicator - The property must be true

This design means you don’t need to write health check code for common infrastructure. Just add the dependency, and Spring Boot handles the rest.

Summary

In this post, I explored Spring Boot Actuator’s auto-configured health indicators. The key points are:

Spring Boot auto-configures health indicators based on classpath dependencies
By default, health details are hidden for security reasons
Use management.endpoint.health.show-details to control visibility
Disable specific indicators with management.health.{name}.enabled=false
The available indicators include DataSource, DiskSpace, Redis, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and more

Understanding these auto-configured indicators helps you leverage built-in monitoring without writing duplicate health checks. Just add the dependencies, configure visibility, and let Spring Boot handle the infrastructure health monitoring.

Final Words + More Resources

My intention with this article was to help others share my knowledge and experience. If you want to contact me, you can contact by email: Email me

Here are also the most important links from this article along with some further resources that will help you in this scope:

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